This page is about weirds/unpractical things that a user could encounter while using Applications, but not due to application bugs.

Network Issues
No internet although Wifi seems OK


You get an error while trying to open the help saying the page does not exist.



However,looking at your phone's Wifi settings, you can check you are actually connected to your Wifi access point , by checking you have an IP adress.





If by chance you can access the same network from a Windows machine , check the connection settings


If you are at home:
It looks your router is not configured properly , router and dns server should point to the same IP k which is usually 192.168.1.1

If you are in a cybercafe:

This happened to me in a cyberface. My laptop could connect but not my phone.

If you are in a cyberface , no way you can change the router settings so you have to set the DNS settings by yourself.
So you need to get the DNS settings from somewhere. If there is a pc available nearby , just do as before . Open a sheel window and use the
'ipconfig' command. Write down the DHCP and DNS IP.

You may alternatively ask someone who is connected to check it's phone wifii settings to get the DHCP/DNS.IP.
Then configure your phone with a static IP . Unckech this when leaving the cafe to go back to automatic IP adress ( DHCP )




Then disconnect / reconnect the Wifi


Crash at startup

Your application did perform well on your previous phone and crashes on your new phone

Possible solution

In case you did use a backup/copy program to 'move'' your application from the old to the new phone, it can happen that it is just not possible
if the application did store phone specific informations.

Example:

An application using the camera was configured to use a resolution that the new phone does not accept.
In conclusion. it is advisable in this situation to install the application rather than copy it as it was deployed on a previous phone.

Your application crashes after you set an improper configuration setting

This situation can happen when you import a configuration file into a given application.
You may accidentaly have altered or deleted the file , and the application does not perform file validation before using the file.
Let's say the application does not validate the file before import , because the validation task if too complex , or validation was just not clever enough
to detect all potential flaws.

Your application crashes when you start it.

Solution

The path below may vary a bit depending on your Android Device , but its usually quite close.

1- Open your your Settings / Applications / Manage Applications

1.1 Click on your application's name

1.2 In the 'Storage' section , press 'Clear All Data'

This will revert your application to the initial post download state.

2- If it does not work , remove then reinstall the application.


The carsh occurs after a software update

Although considerable effort are done to ensure backward compatibility , the new version is sometimes so different  that its not possible to migrate
the data from the old version to the new one.

In that case , you are advised to completely wipe out the application to ensure there will be a clean install from scratch of the latest version.


License

Occasional 'Register' request

    A licensed application needs to connect to the internet once for each handset, to get execution credential. So you could then use it offline.

Symptoms

    You get a 'register' request from the phone , with an application that requires a license.
    It was working fine on a former  handset.

Solution
   
    Maybe tried to copy the previously installed application rather than installing it from  scratch. You then get the old phone's license file on the new phone
    and some third party license library may have an issue with this.
   
    Delete and do a propert install from scratch , while beeing connected to the internet , and have your current android market ( or whatever market )
    default account set , as it was on the former handset. Otherwise , the license will be requested for a different user and will fail.



Bug

You think there is a bug in the application

Before contacting the support , please make sure you have the latest version of the application installed , and that you have read and understood
the online documentation. Thank you.

If still you need to contact support , try to structure your email as much as possible so that the problem can be reproduced. Mention screen
you seen , or error messages. Also if you get a chance to file an Android Crash report , please do it , as it will send very accurate technical information.
A typical software is usually made of thousands lines of code so the first question is , where did it happen. This technical report helps knowing this.